In A-Level biology, there are four biochemical tests to learn for four different biological molecules. This article gives full details of the tests, and a helpful colour summary at the bottom. Test for reducing and non-reducing sugars A sugar is a monosaccharide or disaccharide. The vast majority of sugars learnt about in A-Level biology (glucose,... Continue Reading →
Digestion – Exchange and Transport Ep 13
So far in the exchange and transport series we have mainly been looking at exchange and transport of gases. However, organisms also need to absorb nutrients such as glucose and amino acids so they can carry out processes like respiration and protein synthesis. In this article we will cover how large food molecules are broken... Continue Reading →
Polysaccharides – Biological Molecules Ep 8
Last article we looked at glucose and disaccharides, which are simple carbohydrates. However, many carbohydrate molecules are made up of long chains of monosaccharides joined together to form polysaccharides. Today we will look at polysaccharides made from glucose. We saw in the last article that to form the disaccharide maltose, two glucose molecules are joined... Continue Reading →
Glucose and Disaccharides – Biological Molecules Ep 7
Glucose is a really important carbohydrate for living organisms because it is a reactant in respiration. It is a monosaccharide - a single sugar monomer that can be used to build other types of carbohydrates called polysaccharides. We will cover polymers of glucose in a separate article - today we will look at the structure... Continue Reading →